In the last 5 years, the e-learning sector has grown exponentially in China. University students, housewives, retirees, employees of small and large companies, freelancers: millions of people nowadays turn to online courses to increase or refine their skills.
On the other side, there are teachers, professors, freelancers or simply experts on particular topics and sectors that decide to make their knowledge available by putting them at the service of potential interested buyers. But creating and then selling online courses is a “mission” far from simple. The e-learning market has indeed become very competitive.
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Creating and then selling online courses also requires great organization. In fact, there are many activities to be carried out and carried out, so it becomes essential to use a tool for managing and planning actions.
Create your Chinese website to promote your brand awareness
The Internet as we know it today is based on websites. If you want to be found on Baidu the first step is to create a web page in Chinese with a ch.domain. This will allow you to increase your reputation online and above all help your search engine marketing (SEM) strategy.
In fact, search engines such as Baidu in China, constantly analyze the network looking for pages to create an index. As a result of this continuous research, every time someone searches for a specific online course on a search engine, this returns a list of the results that could be useful to the user; the greater the relevance of your site to your search, the higher your position in the Search Engine Result Page will be (SERP).
Start blogging – story-telling your brand
Fundamental strategy to emerge in online marketing and conquer today’s population is definitely to create a blog. Through the blog, you are not simply adding keywords to your site (which are still important to your Search Engine Optimization), but are creating value for your audience.
Chinese love to hear stories and being involved, so creating value for users is the absolute best marketing strategy. Sharing your experience, history and knowledge with them can definitely be considered “creating value”.
Let users find you on Chinese platforms
One of the primary considerations for foreign brands is how they plan to sell their products through cross-border channels. One option is to go it alone, but there are advantages to working with an established, dedicated cross-border online platform, especially for brands new to China.
The two biggest players are JD Worldwide and Tmall Global. Both are business-to-consumer (B2C) sites with slightly different models.
Alibaba itself in 2013 had launched one of its first online courses on Taobao Tongxue(tongxue means schoolmate in Chinese). Teachers, education organizations or agencies, or third-party online education services could set up Taobao stores to sell live broadcasts, recorded videos, offline courses or events, or courses on third-party sites.
In short, anyone is allowed to set up a store selling online educational content or related physical goods such as offline event tickets.
Increase your online presence with social media
Today, Social Media is used as an extension of our online presence, as it allows us to communicate with our fans, potential customers and partners. Once again, the secret lies in not using social media as an information channel, but as a means of interaction and exchange of value.
Chinese social media are different from the west ones, and plus those Chinese apps are great even for business.
Top 3 social media platforms to help your e-education
Here is a list of the most used apps by the Chinese population, followed by their functions when it comes to business.
WeChat is increasingly used for work purposes. Over 57.2% of WeChat users (who were interviewed by Penguin Intelligence) said most of their new WeChat contacts are work-related. Over 80% of them have used WeChat for work-related matters, including meetings, transferring money, receiving/sending documents and liaising with colleagues.
WeChat for business
- WeChat Official Accounts
Set up a WeChat official account to connect with your target customers with engaging content and information to build customer loyalty. - E-commerce
You can set up an e-commerce store and integrate it with your WeChat official account to display your products or services and process payments. - Instant Messaging
Some small businesses don’t have an official WeChat account. for small businesses, like for who run online courses, it’s essential to use instant messaging to communicate with their Chinese clients. - Advertising
Businesses can place adverts in WeChat moments, subscription account, and mini-programs.
Weibo – open social network to reach more viewers
Weibo is a microblogging platform founded in 2009 by Sina. Weibo is well-known outside of China because of its similarity with Twitter. Since 2017, Weibo already has more monthly active users than Twitter.
In an attempt to regain its relevance, it integrated short video and live-streaming functions to boost user numbers. It also formed a strategic partnership with Alibaba to explore social commerce and marketing solutions, and to facilitate interaction between merchants on Alibaba’s platforms and Weibo users.
Now, the Weibo mini-program within WeChat has been launched to reach more Chinese netizens.
Weibo for business
- Set up a Weibo enterprise account to connect with your followers with engaging and interactive contents.
- Download Page apps on Weibo’s platform to carry out marketing and promotion activities, payment processing, and ad campaigns.
- Use banners on top of your Weibo page to redirect users to your official website or e-commerce partners.
- Advertising: Social Display Ads to redirect users to an advertiser’s Weibo page, Promoted Feeds, Promoted Accounts, and Promoted Trends.
Xiaohongshu to boost your e-reputation
In recent years, Xiaohongshu has become one of the largest social networks in China. It was just a content-generated community when it was created. But when its user’s database gets bigger and bigger, it has integrated e-commerce functions on this platform.
Xiaohongshu is very popular for SEM on beauty, fashion, jewelry. But as there are more and more users on this platform, many other sectors tend to do their marketing on this social network.
The users on the platform are very loyal. They come to this community to find suggestions and formers users’ experiences. To conclude, viewers on this platform have already made up their minds to take online courses, but they hesitate on which one to choose.
Therefore, you need a good marketing strategy to apply to the Chinese online course market. All those channels can be helpful for your professional project, but you need to know very well how they work.
GENTLEMEN MARKETING AGENCY can help you to success in China’s online education market. We are specialists in the world of digital in China with our headquarter based in Shanghai. Don’t hesitate, contact us!
We are professional in branding and public communication:
- We know very well Chinese culture and the Chinese mindset to create a suitable marketing strategy for your brand.
- We have a lot of successful marketing cooperation in many sectors.
- We offer you an analysis of your campaign results every month, and we will discuss with you in detail about results in order to create an even more efficient strategy for your brand.
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I’m looking for China Social Media course
Great market.